


XI. Good Night New York

by notablyindigo



Series: The Better Half [11]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: 9/11, Gen, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-21 07:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1541927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notablyindigo/pseuds/notablyindigo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>trigger/content warning: this fic makes prominent mention of the September 11th attacks on New York City. Please avoid this/care for yourself accordingly.</p>
    </blockquote>





	XI. Good Night New York

**Author's Note:**

> trigger/content warning: this fic makes prominent mention of the September 11th attacks on New York City. Please avoid this/care for yourself accordingly.

She pulls up into the curbside parking and regards the building with some doubt. She hadn’t been sure what to expect when Joaquin had recommended the place, but it wasn’t this. She’d wanted discrete, though, and it is certainly that. The brick edifice is unassuming, could’ve even passed for a residence if it weren’t for the neon sign in the front window which, when on, announces obliquely that it is home to “KUSTOM BY KYA”. 

Joan had been on the fence for the better part of a year, but it was the escalating hype surrounding the coming anniversary that had decided it for her. After the original shock had worn off, it had been hard to feel much more than numbness, a learned desensitization after constant contact with a painful stimulus. But now it’s like the rest of the country is remembering, after spending the last twelve months trying to forget, and between the emotionally-charged talk shows and shocking replays of the original footage on the news, Joan finds herself needing some kind of anchor. 

She can’t forget what happened, of course, because she was there. Well, not there. Not in the building or on the ground when one plane and then two struck the towers on that second Tuesday of September, but she’d been there in the trauma center that day. She’d lost count of the stitches she’d performed, the burns she’d debrieded, the wounds she’d dressed, the units of blood she’d transfused. She is a surgical resident, she’s used to the desperate violence that so frequently terminates in the emergency department. But this? The bodies, the bodies. The bodies, and so much injured flesh. She finds she can’t remember the sound anymore except for in her nightmares, the screaming crying ragged voices pulling her, panic-stricken and sweat-soaked, out of sleep. Joan acquires an insomnia that leaves her too much time to read journal articles on what could have been done differently. Cranial collars to stabilize compromised spines, shock blankets, masks to shield mouths and noses from all that dust. 

Joan can’t forget, but she finds in herself a need for some sort of reminder—something that, after all the horror of the last year, celebrates her city instead of making her want to run away. She wants to have it written in ink that New York is more than twisted wreckage, more than a ghostly crater, more than this. Three weeks before the anniversary and already each lamp post lining the street is hung with a crisp, brand new American flag; Joan has grown weary (wary?) of the Stars and Stripes.

She walks up the steps to the building’s front door and presses the buzzer. A few long moments pass before a voice—a woman’s voice—crackles in over the intercom. 

"Who’s this?" 

"Hi, this is Joan Watson. I have an appointment with Kya." There’s another pause, and then the lock on the front door clicks open. Joan pushes into the foyer and takes the stairs to the second floor. The door at the far end of the landing is open, and Joan walks over to it, gathering her courage. 

A young black woman, about Joan’s height, appears in the doorway. Her hair falls down her back in neat finger-width locs, and her sleeveless bloues reveals a left arm covered in dark, abstract tattoos. 

"Joan I presume?" she says, offering her hand for Joan to shake. "I’m Kya." Her voice sounds different in person, lower and more musical. She steps aside and ushers Joan inside. 

It’s a well lit space, a small apartment that had been converted into a studio. Next to the door is a small waiting room—a row of cushioned chairs, really, arranged around a low wooden coffee table. The walls are decorated with portraits of half-clothed people showing off elaborate tattoos—whole arms, backs, and legs covered in ink. 

The studio is empty but for the two of them. 

"Slow night?" Joan asks, rotating slowly as she takes in the room. Kya stands with her arms crossed by a large drafting table in the corner by the window. 

"No," she says, sitting down at the table. "I’m by appointment only." She flips open the sketchbook on the table to a fresh page. "Joaquin said to take special care of you, so I cleared the evening." Joan smiles, thinking of the sweet EMT she’d met that year during a blood drive at the hospital. They’d been seated next to each other in the donation room, and when he’d rolled up his sleeve, Joan had been first shocked by the exquisite tattoos that began at his wrist and extended up his arm. When she’d decided to get a tattoo of her own, he was the first person she’d gone to. 

"So," Kya says, taking up her pencil, "What’re you thinking of?" Joan joins her at the drawing board, and the vast blankness of the page suddenly makes her nervous. She hesitates. 

"I…" The intention was to pay homage to her city, to write on her body her love for this place where she’s chosen to make her life. But she’d found it difficult to come up with an idea that she liked, which didn’t feel overly dramatic or heavy-handed. She’d seen cityscape after cityscape, some in which the towers were intact, some in which they were missing or ghostly or represented by pillars of light. She’d seen Lady Liberties, Brooklyn Bridges, outlines of Manhattan, but none of those felt right either. Joan explains this haltingly to Kya, who looks steadily at the paper as she listens. 

"Well it sounds like you want something subtle," she says at last, and begins to move her pencil over the page. "Joaquin tells me you’re a doctor?" 

"Yeah," Joan says, fiddling with her necklace. "At Columbia. I’m a cardiac surgery resident." Kya gives a long hum as she sketches. 

"Why New York City?" she asks, glancing up at Joan who is looking fixedly out the window. 

"I was born here," she says. "This is…I’ve never…This is where I belong." 

Kya applies a few finishing touches, then puts her pencil down. 

"What do you think?" she asks, turning the drawing pad toward Joan. Joan looks. She reaches over and traces the lines with her fingers. Kya has drawn a red heart-like apple circumscribing a fluid EKG that transitions into outlines of the building that make up the New York skyline.

"It’s perfect," she says. Kya grins. 

"So, where do you want it?" she asks, getting up from the drafting table and going over to the tray holding her tools. Joan shrugs off her jacket and points over her shoulder to the palm-sized space above her scapula. 

"This is where I was thinking," Joan says. Kya pushes Joan’s hair away from the spot and pulls the strap of Joan’s dress aside. She brushes the skin with her thumb and frowns a bit. 

"It’s over bone. It’s going to hurt," she says. Joan swallows. She glances at the sketch, and then back out the window at the glittering lights of the city. 

"That’s okay," she says, smiling. "It’s worth it."


End file.
